The time off of school during summer break is always looked forward to by students and teachers, but it doesn't mean the school work stops. Summer projects are a way to ensure that students can continue to learn information over the break, but many students would not want to complete them. Although teacher-designed projects would be beneficial for learning in more detail, summer projects should be student-designed because it allows for the students to be more creative, have more freedom, and be more engaged in their project. Student-designed projects allow for students to feel like the project is less of a requirement, and rather more of an enjoyable activity.

Creativity is exactly what students need in order to complete projects in a more effective way. When students design their own project, they let their minds flow freely. This allows for the creation of projects that the students actually are interested in, which helps them become more engaged about whatever the project was about. It is a common belief that teachers should design projects so they can get their students to learn exactly what they need to, and that a student-designed project is not sufficient enough because students will not learn what they need to. However, a project by students allows them to learn content even better because they are choosing what they want to create, not being assigned it, and this creation allows them to explore content in a way that a teacher can't provide. For example, if a student had to create an instrument for music class from scratch, they would be a lot more interested in that than just making a variation of a particular instrument again. The creativity in designing a project is what students need to learn content in a way that is interesting to them, which helps them learn better during a time period where they don't even want to be doing work.

When a student designs their own project, there are very few restrictions applied. This is good because the students can learn required content however they want to, and they will most often choose to learn it in a way that is effective for them, which a teacher can't always provide. There is the argument that teachers can just give students a variety of options to choose from with a project, and that that freedom in choice will help students learn in a way beneficial to them but unfortunately that just isn't the case. Many students never get to create a project that they actually want to make, and teachers often just repeat options over and over again that students are already familiar with. For example, what if a teacher just kept giving out the same current events question, and a student never got to answer the question they were actually interested in? The freedom in designing a project allows a student to actually want to learn content, since they choose a way to learn content that would be fun to them. A student-designed project over summer would allow students to freely choose how they want to learn, which is exactly what is needed since many students do not feel motivated to work on school over summer.

Many students who complete projects throughout their school careers are not engaged in their work, and are just focused on getting a project done by the deadline with all the requirements. A student-designed project would allow students to feel more engaged in their work and not just worry about when it's due, but rather what they are learning throughout the process. Many people think that teachers can fix this problem by allowing students to choose what is required in the project, for example requiring students to pick 15 vocabulary words out of 30 to include in a newspaper project. This just isn't the same as letting a student pick out what they design though, as students would actually feel motivated to create a good project since it is something they want to complete. Students would feel more engaged in their project and feel like it was less forced if they had the ability to design it themselves.

Required summer projects by some schools would be most beneficial if they were student-designed, because it would allow for students to be more creative, feel more freedom, and be more engaged in the overall process of learning through a project. This is especially important for summer projects because many students in the summer do not want to do any school work, so a teacher assigning a student another forced project would not motivate them to complete it, while if the student got to design it themselves, they would be more interested and likely create a better project while learning more. Teachers do have the ability to design a project that students would enjoy, but the student-designed project truly allows for more learning by the students because it is more entertaining and an overall better experience.